1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a drug dispenser which is equipped in drug packers in hospitals or pharmacies selecting one or a few kinds of drug storing in drug dispensers in response to different recipes for patients and automatically packing the drug and which appropriately discharges a drug storing in the drug dispenser to a packing mechanism of a drug packer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Presently, kinds of tablet prescribed in hospitals and pharmacies cover a few thousands, however, the number of kinds of actually used tablets is limited to approximately 800. Accordingly, there has been used one or more tablet packer which can each contain approximately 250 kinds of tablet and automatically pack tablets simply by inputting desired recipe data by means of a control such as a personal computer.
Japanese Utility Model Publication No.58-46962 discloses a prior-art tablet packer comprising a casing, an upper portion of the casing containing a drug container, a lower portion of the casing containing a packing mechanism unit with a conical hopper and a shutter both provided intermediate the drug container and the packing mechanism unit, the drug container containing a plurality of tablet cases in the form of rectangular parallelepiped stacked vertically and horizontally by kinds of tablet, the tablet cases being driven by means of inputting predetermined pickup signal to discharge corresponding kinds of tablets which are delivered into the hopper through a tablet drop passageway, the hopper subsequently delivering one bag of tablets to a packing mechanism unit by the operation of the shutter.
The packing mechanism unit comprises a roller on which a previously double-folded heatsealable packing paper is rolled up, a tension roller, a vertical heatsealer vertically heatsealing the packing paper to form continuous open-topped small bags arranged longitudinally of the packing paper, a horizontal heatsealer horizontally heatsealing the open tops of the open-topped bags after tablets have been shot into the open-topped bags, and feed rollers.
The feed rollers are intermittently driven to dispense the packing paper. The vertical heatsealer forms the continuous open-topped bags, the shutter is then opened to shoot the tablets and the horizontal heatsealer then seals the open tops of bags holding the tablets, when the feed rollers stop dispensing the packing paper.
Japanese patent publication No.63-11253 discloses a tablet dispenser equipped in such tablet packer, appropriately discharging tablets contained in the tablet dispenser and delivering the tablets to a packing mechanism unit. This tablet dispenser comprises: a tablet case; a rotatable disc one side surface of which is opposite to the tablet case; a plurality of ribs arranged with suitable angular spacings on the periphery of the surface of the rotatable disc opposite to the tablet case; retainers mounted on the rotatable disc in association with the spacings so as to reciprocate radially of the rotatable disc to retain and push tablets; a partition plate provided between the rotatable disc and the tablet case and having an opening of which a diameter is larger than that of the rotatable disc so as to pass tablets into a spacing defined by the ribs, a surface of the partition plate opposite to the ribs having a fixed wall surrounding and substantially fitting the ribs; a tablet outlet defined in the fixed wall so as to face a predetermined tablet discharge position; an elastic plate mounted on an object provided outside the fixed wall so as to close the tablet outlet from the outside of the fixed wall, the elastic plate being pushed by a tablet pushed out by one of the retainers to open the tablet outlet; a magnet and a reed switch; a shielding plate shielding the reed switch from the magnet in response to the closing operation of the elastic plate; and a control continuously urging the retainers towards the center of the rotatable disc and controlling the reciprocation of each of the retainers in association with the rotation of the rotatable disc so that the retainer which has reached the tablet discharge position by a rotation of the rotatable disc extends to the tablet outlet through a spacing between adjacent ribs.
This tablet dispenser has advantages in that it ca discharge securely tablets one by one by the operation of the rotatable disc, easily detect the discharge of each tablet and speed up the dispensation of tablets. However, since the tablet dispenser has a structure in which a drive including the rotatable disc and the tablet case are integrally paralleled with each other, the tablet dispenser must have the form of a rectangular parallelepiped approximate to cube and a large bottom area. When a tablet packer receives these tablet dispensers, the tablet dispensers must be stacked, so that the tablet packer entails a problem that the height of the tablet packer must be increased. This problem causes a problem that when refilling upper tablet dispensers with tablets it is very difficult for a shorter man or woman to do so. This problem also causes a problem that when tablets are dropped from tablet dispensers and in particular upper tablet dispensers to a hopper through a tablet drop passageway the tablets experience a large impact and are broken. This problem also causes a problem that since tablets discharged from tablet dispensers drop to the hopper through the tablet drop passageway common with the tablet dispensers some or all of the tablets may fly out through a spacing from which a tablet dispenser has been removed, so that a person cannot refill an empty tablet dispenser with tablets during operation of the tablet packer.
Therefore, a primary object of the present invention is to provide a drug dispenser which reduces the height of a drug packer receiving corresponding drug dispensers so as to improve the accessibility of the drug packer and precluded a break of the drug caused by a drop of a tablet from the drug dispenser to maintain the quality of the drug and which a person can refill with a drug during operation of the drug packer.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a structurally simple drug dispenser which can compactly receive a dispensing mechanism unit although a drug dispenser vertically extends and which has a small component number.